“The only way that VicForests’ logging could be made lawful would be to repeal the protections that the Code of Forest Practice, the Sustainable Forests (Timber) Act 2004 and the Regional Forest Agreements have put in place.” Ken Deacon, Convenor of the Rubicon Forest Protection Group (RFPG) said today.

Mr Deacon was quoting from letters that the RFPG has sent to the Premier and various ministers alerting them to RFPG’s submission to VicForests regarding the latest draft revision of the Timber Release Plan (TRP).

In its submission the RFPG highlights the ways in which the TRP breaches key provisions of the Code of Forest Practice including obligations to:

• maintain and perpetuate native biodiversity (CFP 2.1.1.1.ii and 2.2.2.9),
• minimise the impact of logging on water quality and quantity (CFP 2.1.1.1.v),
• minimise adverse visual impact in areas of landscape sensitivity (CFP 2.1.1.1.vi and MSPs 5.3.1.5),
• apply the precautionary principle to the conservation of biodiversity (CFP 2.2.2.2),
• consider the advice of relevant experts (CFP 2.2.2.3),
• ensure appropriate wildlife corridors (CFP 2.2.2.8),
• retain and protect habitat trees or habitat patches and long-lived understorey species (2.2.2.10),
• comply with restrictions on size and aggregation of coupes (MSPs 2.4.1.1),
• comply with the limits on logging in the Thomson Dam catchment (MSP 3.5.1.5(a)), and
• comply with restrictions on logging in Bushfire Management Zones[1]: (MSP 5.8.1.5(a)).  

“These breaches and looming breaches affect hundreds of individual logging coupes; they mean that the Sustainable Forests (Timber) Act 2004 has been and will be contravened; and they signal that the VicForests Board has failed to fulfil its obligations under the State Owned Enterprises Act (1992)” Mr Deacon said.

Two attachments to the RFPG submission provide new information regarding the impact of logging, first, on Snobs Creek and the Snobs Creek Hatchery and second, on water loss from the Thomson Dam catchment. One of the more egregious breaches identified in the submission concerns unlawful logging in ‘bushfire management zones’ [1].

“This TRP can only deepen the conflict between logging and forest conservation” Mr Deacon said.

The ecological integrity of the native forests of the Central Highlands is being degraded: drier, younger, loss of understory, increasing weeds and pests. It is being degraded by bushfires and logging.

The resilience of these forest ecosystems, facing a warming climate and wider, hotter bushfires, is being actively undermined by unsustainable logging. Ecological collapse looms large along this trajectory.

The Victorian Sustainable Forests (Timber) Act and the Code of Practice for Timber Production commit to ecological sustainability and the preservation of biodiversity. The code includes a range of provisions governing the operations of VicForests which are designed to ensure ecological sustainability.

VicForests breaches these provisions with impunity. The conservation regulator routinely fails to detect and prosecute breaches of the code.

But worse, VicForests is actually obliged to breach the provisions of the code because of the unsustainable timber supply commitments the Government has entered into.

The volumes required under these supply commitments, particularly the pulpwood agreement, are incompatible with the requirements of the Sustainable Forests (Timber) Act 2004 and with code compliance.

Unfortunately, VicForests is obliged to breach code provisions. The conservation regulator is obliged to turn a blind eye to such breaches. Government ministers are obliged to okay the draft timber release plan (TRP) proposed by VicForests. The VicForests board is obliged to authorise a TRP which rubber stamps the harvest areas that VicForests management needs to fulfil its supply contracts.

The government’s ecological obligations are being sacrificed in order to meet its timber supply commitments. 

Forest conservation groups around Victoria have been warning of unsustainable logging for decades, but particularly since the 2009 bushfires. Successive governments have denied the contradictions or resorted to ‘smoke and mirrors’ to create an appearance of action (the recently announced Victorian Forestry Plan).

As the conflict between logging and conservation commitments deepens, the space for judicial action has widened. In the Possums Case, Justice Mortimer found the breaches of conservation law to be starkly evident in the eyes of the court. As ministers deny the problem conservation groups from around Victoria are resorting to legal action to protect our native forest ecosystems.

In the face of mounting opposition to unsustainable logging VicForests has sought to impede conservation advocacy, including through the delayed release of coupe harvest schedules and the removal of net harvest areas from the TRP.

Nevertheless, the politicians still face a roadblock. One option the government is considering would be to weaken the provisions of the Code and continue to ignore the rising threats to forest ecosystems. Undoubtedly some ministers are hoping that the current code review will weaken the long-term planning provisions of the Code.

The other option is to recognise that Victoria’s native forest ecosystems are in jeopardy and cease logging immediately. The pressure to do so will only increase.

9 September, 2020

(The regulation of timber harvesting in Victoria is complex. See RFPG's interactive guide to regulatory framework for more detail).

[1]. As defined in the Code of Practice for Bushfire Management on Public Land 2012